Download or read book The Next Step Disentangling the Role of Plant Soil Feedbacks in Plant Performance and Species Coexistence Under Natural Conditions written by Johannes Heinze and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2020-09-17 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This eBook is a collection of articles from a Frontiers Research Topic. Frontiers Research Topics are very popular trademarks of the Frontiers Journals Series: they are collections of at least ten articles, all centered on a particular subject. With their unique mix of varied contributions from Original Research to Review Articles, Frontiers Research Topics unify the most influential researchers, the latest key findings and historical advances in a hot research area! Find out more on how to host your own Frontiers Research Topic or contribute to one as an author by contacting the Frontiers Editorial Office: frontiersin.org/about/contact.
Download or read book The Nature of Plant Communities written by J. Bastow Wilson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-21 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a comprehensive review of the role of species interactions in the process of plant community assembly.
Download or read book Competition and Coexistence written by Ulrich Sommer and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The question "Why are there so many species?" has puzzled ecologist for a long time. Initially, an academic question, it has gained practical interest by the recent awareness of global biodiversity loss. Species diversity in local ecosystems has always been discussed in relation to the problem of competi tive exclusion and the apparent contradiction between the competitive exclu sion principle and the overwhelming richness of species found in nature. Competition as a mechanism structuring ecological communities has never been uncontroversial. Not only its importance but even its existence have been debated. On the one extreme, some ecologists have taken competi tion for granted and have used it as an explanation by default if the distribu tion of a species was more restricted than could be explained by physiology and dispersal history. For decades, competition has been a core mechanism behind popular concepts like ecological niche, succession, limiting similarity, and character displacement, among others. For some, competition has almost become synonymous with the Darwinian "struggle for existence", although simple plausibility should tell us that organisms have to struggle against much more than competitors, e.g. predators, parasites, pathogens, and envi ronmental harshness.
Download or read book Plant Species Coexistence written by Chelsea Cunard and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plant soil feedbacks, specifically soil microbial communities, have been proposed to affect plant species' relative abundances and stabilize coexistence within a community. Negative plant soil feedbacks, where plant species condition microbial communities detrimental to conspecifics, may promote coexistence and plant diversity within a community both by lowering overall fitness and creating negative frequency dependence, i.e. stabilizing niche differences. Positive plant soil feedbacks, where plant species condition communities beneficial to conspecifics, may promote the dominance of a species through increased overall fitness and reduced negative frequency dependence. Invasive species can disrupt coexistence and reduce resident species abundance and diversity in its invaded range, potentially due to a more neutral to positive interaction with the soil microbial community resulting from an escape from specialized pests and pathogens in its native range. However, a more antagonistic soil community could accumulate through time to reduce the dominance of the invader and promote coexistence between it and native plant species. We explored whether the propensity to coexist increased due to the presence of soil biota, as well as whether the likelihood of coexistence increased across invasion history for invasive Microstegium vimineum and native plants due to changes in the soil community. In an observational study across M. vimineum's invasive range in the eastern United States, we found a decline in M. vimineum's survival at low frequency and changes in its soil/root fungal community across invasion history. In a 2-year field experiment negative frequency dependence increased for M. vimineum across invasion history in conspecific conditioned soil. Finally, in a greenhouse experiment we found that the soil community promoted coexistence of M. vimineum and native Pilea pumila through increased stabilizing niche differences. These results combined show that the soil community promotes coexistence through stabilizing interactions and that the likelihood of coexistence between invasive M. vimineum and native plants is potentially increasing through invasion time due to an accumulation of an antagonistic soil community.
Download or read book Spatial Nutrient Heterogeneity and Plant Species Coexistence written by Michael Pollock McDonnell-Alexander and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Species Coexistence written by M. Tokeshi and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2009-06-22 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a novel endeavour in ecological science, this book focuses on amajor issue in organismal life on Earth:species coexistence. Thebook crosses the usual disciplinary boundaries betweenpalaeobiology, ecology and evolutionary biology and provides atimely overview of the patterns and processes of species diversityand coexistence on a range of spatio-temporal scales. In thisunique synthesis, the author offers a critical and penetratingexamination of the concepts and models of coexistence and communitystructure, thus making a valuable contribution to the field ofcommunity ecology. There is an emphasis on clarity andaccessibility without sacrificing scientific rigour, making thisbook suitable for both advanced students and individual researchersin ecology, palaeobiology and environmental and evolutionarybiology. Comprehensive and contemporary synthesis. Pulls together the aggregate influence of evolution and ecologyon patterns in communities. Balanced mix of theory and empirical work. Clearly structured chapters with short introduction andsummary.
Download or read book Biological Diversity written by Michael A. Huston and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1994-09-15 with total page 708 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The key to preserving and managing biodiversity is understanding which processes are important at different scales, and how changes affect different components of biodiversity. In this book, existing theories on diversity are synthesised into a logical framework. Global and landscape-scale patterns of biodiversity are described in the first section. In the second, the spatial and temporal dynamics of diversity are emphasised. The third section develops an integrated set of mechanistic explanations for diversity patterns at the levels of population, community, ecosystem and landscape. Finally, case studies examine diversity patterns in marine and terrestrial ecosystems and the effects of biological invasions. The book concludes with a discussion of the economics of preserving biological diversity. This book will interest research workers and students of ecology, biology and conservation.
Download or read book Mechanisms of Plant Species Coexistence in a Semi Deciduous Tropical Forest in Panama written by Matthew I. Daws and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Perennial Plant Models to Study Species Coexistence in a Variable Environment written by Chi Yuan and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Living organisms face a changing physical environment. A major challenge in ecology is understanding the ecological and evolutionary role that this changing physical environment has in shaping a community. One fundamental question is how environmental variation affects species coexistence. Modern understanding of environmental variation emphasized the hypothesis that possible adaptations to a fluctuating environment allow species to use different environments in different ways. Species can partition temporally their use of resources. Persistent stages in the life cycle such as prolonged longevity can buffer species through unfavorable environments. Differences in longevity will also lead to different nonlinear responses of population growth rate to fluctuating in resources. Questions arise: how do these possible adaptations to environmental fluctuations affect coexistence. Do they act through multiple coexistence mechanisms, how strong are the mechanisms, and do the mechanisms interact? A framework has been developed for quantifying coexistence mechanisms in models. Being able to quantify coexistence mechanisms in the field is critical to understand different processes contributing to species coexistence in a community: whether a process prevents species dropping out of the community (stable coexistence), or slows down species losses (unstable coexistence), or both. In many respects, applications of those techniques for quantifying coexistence mechanisms have the potential for substantial improvements. In particular, very few studies directly quantify coexistence mechanisms for perennial plants. Coexistence of plant is often puzzling because they share similar resources. Environmental variation has been suggested as an important factor for niche partitioning but challenges for studying it in perennial plants are unclear. The long generation time poses challenges to controlled experiments. Moreover, perennial plants have complex life histories. Vital rates change with size. In addition, tremendous temporal variation is observed in various life history processes. Seedling recruitment and individual growth can both be highly sensitive to fluctuation in the physical environment. Furthermore, different processes in different stages of the life history can interact with environment and competition in different ways. Using perennial plants as a specific system, our study reveals a crucial role in theory development to summarize understanding of such a complex system. I start with the simplest model for perennial plants, the lottery model, to study the relative importance of two coexistence mechanisms: the storage effect and the relative nonlinearity. Then I extend the model by showing that variation in individual growth can also lead to stable coexistence similar to the effect of variation in seedling recruitment. Species can benefit most from variable environments when the processes contributing most to capturing resources on average are also very sensitive to environmental fluctuations. New mechanisms arise through shifts in size structure, which depend on how vital rates change through ontogeny.
Download or read book Reproductive Allocation in Plants written by Edward Reekie and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2011-05-04 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much effort has been devoted to developing theories to explain the wide variation we observe in reproductive allocation among environments. Reproductive Allocation in Plants describes why plants differ in the proportion of their resources that they allocate to reproduction and looks into the various theories. This book examines the ecological and evolutionary explanations for variation in plant reproductive allocation from the perspective of the underlying physiological mechanisms controlling reproduction and growth. An international team of leading experts have prepared chapters summarizing the current state of the field and offering their views on the factors determining reproductive allocation in plants. This will be a valuable resource for senior undergraduate students, graduate students and researchers in ecology, plant ecophysiology, and population biology. 8 outstanding chapters dedicated to the evolution and ecology of variation in plant reproductive allocation Written by an international team of leading experts in the field Provides enough background information to make it accessible to senior undergraduate students Includes over 60 figures and 29 tables
Download or read book Models of Seed Predation and Coexistence of Desert Annual Plant Species written by Jessica Jia-yin Kuang and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Games on the Checkerboard written by and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Mathematical Ecology of Plant Species Competition written by Anthony G. Pakes and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presented in this document is a class of deterministic models describing the dynamics of two plant species whose characteristics are common to the majority of annual plants that have a seedbank. Formulated in terms of elementary dynamical systems, these models were developed in response to four major questions on the long-term outcomes of binary mixtures of plant species: Is ultimate coexistence possible? If not, which strain will win? Does the mixture approach an equilibrium? If so, how long does the mixture take to attain it? The book gives a detailed account of model construction, analysis and application to field data obtained from long-term trials. In the particular case study modelled, the species involved are two pastural strains whose dynamics have critical agricultural and economic implications for the areas in which they are found, including North America, the Mediterranean region and Australia. This study will be valuable to researchers and students in mathematical biology and to agronomists and botanists interested in population dynamics.
Download or read book Behaviour and Ecology of Spiders written by Carmen Viera and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-11-02 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Within the last few decades, arachnology in the Neotropical region has experienced a great development filling the knowledge gap in one of the most diverse regions of the world. Nevertheless, large geographical areas remain poorly sampled, especially within the Amazon, and new genera and species have been continuously discovered, even in urban areas. In congruence with the recent improvements in research, several aspects of the ecology, behaviour and natural history of spiders, such as interactions with other predators and parasitoids, social interactions, dispersal patterns, habitat requirements, mating behaviors, among others, are being carefully investigated. These recent contributions incorporate substantial information on the preexisting knowledge on these subjects every year. Our main objective with this book is to present a summary on these new researches and on the currently knowledge on the main subjects involved in the general theme, emphasizing the contribution of the rich fauna of the Neotropical region to the research of behaviour and ecology of the spiders.
Download or read book Coexistence written by Jan Sapp and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-18 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about tropical biology in action- how biologists grapple with the ecology and evolution of the great species diversity in tropical rainforests and coral reefs. Tropical rainforests are home to 50% of all the plant and animal species on earth, though they cover only about 2% of the planet. Coral reefs hold 25% of the world's marine diversity, though they represent only 0.1 % of the world's surface. The increase in species richness from the poles to the tropics has remained enigmatic to naturalists for more than 200 years. How have so many species evolved in the tropics? How can so many species coexist there? At a time when rainforests and coral reefs are shrinking, when the earth is facing what has been called the sixth mass extinction, understanding the evolutionary ecology of the tropics is everyone's business. Despite the fundamental importance of the tropics to all of life on earth, tropical biology has evolved relatively slowly and with difficulties - economic, political, and environmental. This book is also about tropical science in context, situated in the complex socio-political history, and the rich rainforests and coral reefs of Panama. There are no other books on the history of tropical ecology and evolution or on the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Thus situated in historical context, Jan Sapp's aim is to understand how naturalists have studied and conceptualized the great biological diversity and entangled ecology of tropics. This book has potential to be used in tropical biology classes, ecology courses, evolutionary ecology and it could also be useful in classes on the history of biology.
Download or read book Experimental Studies of Disturbance in Oldfield Plant Communities written by Juan J. Armesto and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Mechanisms for Species Coexistence Under Environmental Change written by Loralee Larios and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding the potential mechanisms that influence invasion resistance and coexistence in plant communities has been a central tenet of invasion ecological research during the past few decades. My dissertation used observational and experimental approaches to understand what processes influence whether a community is invaded, resists invasion, or results in species coexistence within a California grassland. Chapter 2 reviewed the impacts that alien plant species may have on communities and provided a framework for how to identify when invader impacts lead to recovery constraints for the native community and integrate these constraints into restoration efforts. Chapter 3 investigated how species effects on resource availability can result in differing invasion dynamics in native versus exotic dominated grasslands. I found that while exotic and native species differentially alter the availability of light and nitrogen in a community, nitrogen availability is key in determining invasion of an exotic into a native grassland as well as the invasion of a native into an exotic dominated community. Chapter 4 investigated how propagule pressure after an extreme disturbance can result in the invasion of intact native grasslands. I found that the recovery of native grassland stands after an extreme disturbance (fire+drought) can be stalled by an influx of exotic propagules from the surrounding matrix. Chapter 5 addressed how the strength of plant-soil feedbacks for a native and exotic may change with soil resource availability changes on soil communities and with a competitor. I found a negative effect of exotic conditioned soil on native growth and no effect of native conditioned soil on exotic growth, suggesting that plant-soil feedbacks may facilitate the establishment of the exotic as well as its dominance. Lastly, Chapter 6 investigated how seed addition and soil amendments management efforts affected native recovery after an extreme disturbance. I found that seed additions and soil N reductions were able to increase the establishment and fitness of some natives, but may not be sufficient to promote full native recovery. This work provides a tool to understand not only why native resident communities are invaded but also how to reduce the resistance of invaded communities and increase the resistance of native communities. Additionally this work allowed me to integrate the impacts that exotic species have on communities to make general predictions about the recovery of native communities after an extreme disturbance or control efforts. Overall, I observed that native communities and populations are vulnerable to invasion after a large disturbance and with nitrogen enrichment. From low to moderate nitrogen availability, native and exotic species should coexist due to niche partitioning, but not as a result of density dependent negative plant-soil feedbacks. Lastly, I found that an exotic species is able to maintain its dominance due to its strong competitive effect on native species, particularly at high nitrogen availability and its ability to culture a soil community that negatively impacts the growth of native species.
